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N' A Ilíada, Hera quer seduzir Zeus (por um motivo que agora não interessa, como a vitória de Agamémnon e das tropas gregas na Guerra de Tróia). Afrodite dá-lhe uma espécie de banda ou fita bordada para que ponha à volta do peito e assim garanta o sucesso do plano. Zeus, encantado por Hera, tem uma fala extraordinária, que oscila entre a piada e a prova de que mesmo os deuses percebem muito pouco de mulheres: "Hera, you can choose some other time for paying your visit to Okeanos - for the present let us devote ourselves to love and to the enjoyment of one another. Never yet have I been so overpowered by passion neither for goddess nor mortal woman as I am at this moment for yourself - not even when I was in love with the wife of Ixion who bore me Peirithoos, peer of gods in counsel, nor yet with Danae the daintily-ankled daughter of Acrisius, who bore me the famed hero Perseus. Then there was the daughter of Phoenix, who bore me Minos and Rhadamanthus: there was Semele, and Alkmene in Thebes by whom I begot my lion-hearted son Herakles, while Semele became mother to Bacchus the comforter of humankind. There was queen Demeter again, and lovely Leto, and yourself - but with none of these was I ever so much enamored as I now am with you." Homero, A Íliada, XIV, 376-394.